


My Soul is in the Sky

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [2]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Hypnotism, M/M, Moriarty's plan goes off the rails, Reincarnation, Shakespearean style language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard and Khan are reunited, reincarnated as John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. But Moriarty is playing a foolish game, and he doesn't know what he's about to unleash when he hypnotises John to prove to Sherlock what a weak mind his pet has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Soul is in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I had no intention of writing anything else in this universe, but I saw Richard III again and Atlin sent me pics of Khan and I just like the two of them together so much.... this happened. 
> 
> The story title is from a Midsummer Night's Dream, from the Mechanicals play about Pyramus and Thisbee, the lovers separated by a wall. It seemed apt.
> 
> [aranel_parmadil has now podficced this story too](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4298412) \- her Moriarty is perfection!

From the night the madman at the pool nearly sundered them again, Sherlock and John were inseparable. Their past selves slumbered secret in their cells and deep within dreams, and though they knew they belonged together, they did not remember why, or the many lives they spent to find each other out once more.

The hard parts of their souls – the Richard and Khan they once were – they rendered soft for each other (although in their nightly loving, soft bodies were rendered firm and resolute for their mutual pleasure). They were linked, like chain armour, stronger for the intertwining, and no enemy could part them.

Yet they had one enemy who would try.

James Moriarty peered like a maze-eyed basilisk and plotted, his stratagems twisted for ends even more unwholesome than their means.

He took John one morning from the clinic, his emissary a patient using the traitorous sting of a syringe, too sudden-sharp to be stopped.

Moriarty liked his games too well for it to be so simple, so he left a trail, maze-like enough for Sherlock to be unsuspecting for a time, to bring his equal-and-opposite to his side, in a disused Tube station.

He smiled, devilish-happy that Sherlock had come, and wicked-glad to have the upper hand.

“There you are, Sherlock. Come for your little pet. And he is sweet, isn’t he, that John of yours? What a brave little soldier.”

He grinned and his eyes were wide and dark as a poisoned well. At the press of a remote, a light came on, a cone of yellow-white, revealing John standing at the edge of the platform. A slender rope around his pinioned wrists held him barely upright, his feet balanced on the tip-toe edge of concrete. He would have liked to step back, but his balance was off, and it took all his concentration not to fall – to end up dangling over the pit, with its two live rails of four, and the quiet threat of some great beast hurtling towards him in the dark.

For trains still passed through this station from time to time, although they did not stop.

 _John is drugged_ , Sherlock thought, _But coming round_.

John was blinking in the spotlight and frowning in confusion. Then his beautiful gold-flecked blue eyes snapped open to see their enemy, and confusion was swept away by rage. _This_ he understood: Moriarty was a serpent and meant them harm, and John Watson would do whatever he could, whatever he must, to protect his soulmate. He would kill for him (and had done); he would die for him (and had offered); he would surrender everything he was and had to keep _safe_ the one who had held his heart for all these centuries.

“What do you want?” asked Sherlock, terse and impatient. He once thought he’d enjoy this game with Moriarty, at least until he could win it, but it turned out quite soon that he found it both dull and appalling. A mad dog, however cunning, was still a mad dog.

Moriarty twinkled at Sherlock, as though his madness were charming.

“You know what I want.”

Sherlock’s jaw tightened. “I am not interested.”

Moriarty pouted. “Sheeeeerlock,” he scowled, “Don’t be booooring. Don’t tell me you’re _ordinary_. It’s soooooo disappointing.”

“He’s not,” hissed John through clenched teeth, “ _Ordinary_. You venomous maggot.”

“Not now, John,” Sherlock said impatiently. He’d review later his spike of pleasure at both the defence and the insult.

“That’s right, John, shut up,” said Moriarty with mock-sternness that was yet deadly, “I’m not done with you. I want you to show Sherlock something. I want you to show Sherlock how _ordinary_ you are and how ordinary he _isn’t_.”

John clenched his teeth and glared, as though his gaze was a venom-tipped spear.

“Did you know,” said Moriarty, “That hypnotism works? But only on _some_ minds. _Dull_ minds.”

Sherlock waved his hand in irritation, swatting away inconsequential things.

“Want to see how dull your pet is?” asked Moriarty.

“Go ahead,” said Sherlock, feigning boredom, “Surprise me.”

Moriarty took the slender rope keeping John tilted on the edge of the platform and sliced it with a knife, but only to hold John still more precariously over the pit. His hand on the cord was all that kept John from falling.

“Look at me, Johnny,” Moriarty sing-songed, “There’s a lad.”

John turned his head slightly, that cobalt gaze both hot and sharp, and he fell instead into the abyss of the mad dog’s eyes.

Words that he heard but did not understand crawled like spiders into his ear and into his brain, and John Watson fell away inside himself, too. He contracted to a point, a small bright star, deep, deep, deep.

And someone else stepped out from memory.

His right arm stilled, a stiff and useless limb weighing him down. His shoulder hunched, although his spine was straight. The muscles remembered otherwise and gathered inward, upward, an echo of the old deformity.

If John’s expression had been hard and full of rage, his expression now was cold and full of implacable enmity.

“Oh, look,” said Moriarty, dancing back from the edge and pulling no-longer John back with him. He spun the hunchbacked figure around to face Sherlock, “A little hocus pocus, a little regression, and look what your precious pet turns out to be. A funny little cripple. Did you used to wear a jester’s cap? All those little bells.” Moriarty waggled his fingers in front of the hunchback’s face, “Or did you live with the pigs, little dwarf?”

Moriarty turned away from the creature he taunted to taunt his other victim. “See how simple he is. He doesn’t deserve you…”

Only to find his quarry gone. A body stood there still: tall and haughty, yet not quite the arrogant presence Moriarty knew. This figure was slender as recalled, but something in his stance was made of deeper gravity, and it spoke not just of intelligence but power. Something in those winter eyes was not merely angry and disgusted, but had the glittering cold-and-hot energy of a star. Distant, until you fell within its orbit, and then fierce enough to burn your heart to ash.

Moriarty, though, had too much madness in his own eyes to see how close he had brought others to dance on that edge with him.

These two here: these had not been _good_ men.

“Oh no,” Moriarty frowned, distressed, “You too? A little trick like that and you go off to dreamy bye-bye too? Ordinary. Ordinary, ordinary, _ordinary._ You are such a _let-down_ , Sherlock.”

Moriarty dropped the cord, perforce allowing not-John’s arms to drop.

“I guess I’ll have to kill you both, now.”

“Richard?” asked the one with distant stars for eyes.

“Aye,” said the other.

“Oh, I haven’t brought Richard out to play yet,” said Moriarty, not understanding, “I’ve been saving Richard Brook for a rainy daaaa-aaay. Molly’s such a sweetie though, isn’t she? Sweet and soft like a sugar mouse…”

It was not completely unexpected that Sherlock’s little pet had twisted out of the ropes at his wrist, once Moriarty had let go.

It was, however, unforseen that not-John should seize him by the hair and expose his throat (Moriarty was laughing, though – he still thought the hunchback a joke) just as not-Sherlock’s arm shot out straight like a cannonball, hard and swift, to batter blunt into the gateway of his throat. (And the laughter ceased, straight, into a choking gasp.)

“Be,” snarled the voice of Khan in Sherlock’s body, “Quiet.”

“Hear how the wyrm hisses now,” observed Richard’s voice in John’s, amused, “Fetch thee a breath, dog, so that we may hear you howl for mercy.”

Moriarty’s eyes rolled and bloody foam flecked his lips. He sucked in wheezing air and wondered what had happened.

“How fare thee, love?” Richard asked, concerned only for Khan.

“I fare… strangely,” Khan confessed, “This body is curiously fragile.”

“As mine is curiously hale, though my withered arm, unwithered, cannot yet move. Yet your fairness shines bright as the moon, even in this grotto.”

Khan smiled and bent to kiss Richard’s mouth. “My prince. I’ve missed you.”

Richard smiled, all-knowing, at his Khan. “Yet not so much now as formerly. You came for me after all, through time and lives, although you swore not to swear you would.”

“I did not so swear to _you_ : but to myself, that is another story.”

“The heavens and not your engines did make it so,” said Richard, laying his hand over Khan’s heart, “The gods do not love me, as I despise them, but my Zeus-like love loves me more than any god.”

“And I will slay whomever tries to harm you, my fearless prince.”

They both turned then, to gaze cold upon the creature that knelt gasping on the tiled floor, staring at them, uncomprehending.

Richard lifted the short length of rope which had bound him aloft, regarded the swinging end of it, reminiscent of a tiny gallows, and thence to the cowed knave.

“I should flay thee,” he said, “And parade thy goggle-eyed head on a pike. I could write thee an epitaph: Here see the now-silent dog, which, being mad, did bite at the sky and believe it was master of the moon.”

Richard tilted his head to one side to regard Moriarty more shrewdly. “Twas a time I would have done it ‘ere my words were quit my mouth. Once I murdered _babes_ , my _kin_ , to spite their mother, heaven and myself. But that humour has wilted in me, and I have shed that snake-like skin through many trials. I find killing unpleasing, outside immediate need and the battlefield.” He looked at Khan. “How say you, love?”

“This lunatic dared to threaten you,” said Khan, “And if I had been made to wait another life to find you again, I would have split his skin and eaten his heart while it beat still. But yes. A hundred lives have worn some choices unpalatable. You are yet well, so he will yet live.”

Khan crouched to stare the lunatic in the face. “Your little trick, your hocus pocus, conjured not a jester but a _king_ , and I his god-like warrior. I will be his good right arm, although his left is stronger still. He doesn’t need me for such brutal work, of course. Richard of Gloucester as was and John Watson as is has a better mind, a better heart and a better soul than to have need of me.”

“Sweet fool,” said Richard, cupping Khan’s face in his hand, “Thou art _my_ better heart, and soul too. And thy mind is like a canopy of light, so far above, illuminating all.”

“And you conduct my light,” confessed Khan, “The only one not of my blood who never feared me.”

“You are fearsome,” Richard promised him with a smile, “Wise as Athena, swift as Hermes, mighty as Zeus, beautiful as Aphrodite. But I am a king, and right fearsome too.”

Khan rose and laughing, kissed his brow. “You are warlike Ares and yes, right fearsome, as well as Apollo, god of healing and archery, and perfection, too.”

Moriarty had ceased choking but now his puzzled scowl was offended in other ways. “Do you two _have_ to?”

“The dog begins to bark again,” noted Richard.

“He’s but a dog, and he doesn’t matter,” said Khan.

And the dog whined, confused and irate, while Khan and Richard kissed, long and deep, then bit lightly, feisty and affectionate, at each other’s lips before melding in kissing sighs once more.

“John as is begins to wake,” said Richard after several soft-breathing moments.

“Sherlock as I have become returns, too. He seems annoyed.” Khan’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “My new self’s philosophy does not like to account for us.”

“Let us, in those new clothes of flesh, return and be glad. I do not wish to learn those lessons again that were endured before this life. It is enough we are united.” Richard flexed his right hand, and it moved as though it had always done so. He stretched his shoulders and the hunched one relaxed. It was his other that was scarred in this life, and he now massaged it with his right hand.

Khan wrapped his long arms around his prince and gathered him close to kiss. “Whether John or Richard, you are my sun.”

Richard smiled, like sunshine, truly, and then he blinked and he was gone. In his stead, John’s brow furrowed, as though waking from a dream.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock blinked hard. “What…” He frowned at Moriarty staring at them. “…The actual fuck just happened?” He did indeed sound annoyed.

“You’re not ordinary,” said Moriarty wonderingly to John, and to Sherlock too, “You’re both _crazy_.”

“Thanks for the opinion,” said John, rubbing at his wrists and wondering how he came to be untied, “But I’ll get a second one, if it’s all the same to you.”

A blast of air whipped through the tunnel, cold and from the east. It heralded cruel things.

Moriarty rose, and it was like slow motion, how he stood upright, looked from John to Sherlock and back again, shaking his head, and then, as though stepping out for a casual stroll, he jumped lightly down onto the track, and began to walk into the blustery east wind, and the hurtling monster.

John seemed for a moment to consider jumping down after him, but Sherlock grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t risk it. He might still be armed.”

John hesitated and stared down into the horizontal, endless well. “He might find a service tunnel. Or an alcove.”

“There’s nowhere for him to run,” said Sherlock, “Mycroft’s people are waiting.” He took John’s hand and tugged him towards the dark stairs.

“As traps go,” said John, “It was a bit elaborate.”

“It had to be, for him.”

“Did you know he was going to…?” John waved his hand in an attempt to express the inarticulate. He was not, truth be told, entirely sure what had happened.

“No,” said Sherlock, sounding certain, although he had no more idea than John what had come to pass, “Not precisely.”

“Who’s in the train?”

Sherlock said, with a tight smile, “Did I ever tell you what Mycroft wanted to be when he was small?”

John stared at him, then grinned, then laughed. “A train driver?”

“We had a complete set of the original Awdry Railway Series books as children,” said Sherlock grinning slyly.

“I always thought there was something a little Gordon the bossy Big Engine about him.”

“More the Fat Controller, I thought,” said Sherlock, smirking as he led them both up the stairs and into the light through Down Street, opposite Green Park.

Sherlock’s phone pipped. He angled the phone so John could see the message.

_What did you do to the man? He is completely deranged._

Sherlock’s fingers flew over the keys. _Yes. Well. I thought you might have noticed that already. - SH_

He and John clasped hands and crossed the road…

And John thought for a moment he remembered seeing the Tyburn river – long sealed over and trapped now below London in brick and concrete – running through this valley and into the park, and wished suddenly to bathe in its clear water with soap of honeysuckle and cedar with the most beautiful man he knew, who still, thank god, walked by his side.

They walked under trees, dappled in shade and light…

And Sherlock thought he remembered lying naked by a brook in a glade, John bearded and naked and laughing beside him, or perhaps it wasn’t a memory but an _idea_ , and a good one at that.

“Sherlock,” said John darkly, “Next time we’re setting traps for lunatics, you can be the bait.”

Sherlock lowered his head to kiss John’s neck, a short cut to forgiveness. “I can make it up to you, if you like,” he murmured in his smoothest sex voice.

John grinned and raised Sherlock’s hand in his to nip saucily at his wrist. “How do you feel about outdoor sex?”

“In your own way, John, you’re a genius,” smiled Sherlock, “And I know a place.”

“What are we waiting for then?”

“Nothing at all,” said Sherlock, pulling John off the path and into the trees.

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] My Soul is in the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298412) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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